Functionalizing structures by incorporation of active or functional particles is an area of interest to a number of fields. One conventional technique involves bulk incorporation, resulting in particles being dispersed throughout bulk of base material. Bulk incorporation suffers from various deficiencies, including non-uniform mixing and agglomeration of particles within a base material and adverse impact on the processability of the base material. Bulk incorporation is also inefficient if the goal is to expose particles at the surface, since a number of particles remain dispersed within an interior of the base material. Another conventional technique involves coating processes. Coating processes also suffer from various deficiencies, including non-uniform mixing and agglomeration of particles within a coating material, poor adhesion, delamination, and high roughness.
It is against this background that a need arose to develop the surface-embedded device components and related manufacturing methods described herein.